ALAWON: American Library Association Washington Office Newsline
Volume 12, Number 33
April 17, 2003

In This Issue: Iraqi Cultural Heritage Disaster

In an attack on the cultural history of Iraq, looters and arsonists ransacked and gutted the National Library this week, transforming an the nation's intellectual legacy into a wasteland of smoldering remains of books and artifacts dating back thousands of years. In much of the library, not a single recognizable book or manuscript could be seen among the ash. Also destroyed was Iraq's principal Islamic library, home to some of the world's most priceless early Qurans and other scholarly material pertaining to the Islamic faith.  
Except for wooden card catalog drawers and a carved-wood service counter, which somehow escaped the flames, nothing was left in the National Library's main wing except its charred walls and ceilings. Built in 1977, the three-story National Library building housed all books published in Iraq, including copies of all doctoral theses. It preserved rare old books on Baghdad and the region, historically important books on Arabic linguistics, and antique handwritten manuscripts in Arabic that were gradually being transformed into printed versions. The Library was known to also house manuscripts from the Ottoman and Abbasid periods of Middle Eastern history. 

 "The American Library Association deplores the catastrophic losses to Iraq's cultural heritage that have already occurred with the destruction of the National and Islamic Libraries, and ALA urges coalition forcers to work with the Iraqi people to protect further damage to Libraries and other cultural institutions in Iraq," said ALA President Maurice J. (Mitch) Freedman. "ALA stands ready to work with our sister cultural organization in Iraq, appropriate agencies, and the Iraqi people, and calls upon the U.S. government to help re-build and restore these and other Libraries in Iraq that have been looted and destroyed - helping to return to the Iraqi people an important part of their cultural history and legacy," he concluded. 
 
Your Help Needed: 
If you or someone you know is in contact with Iraqi librarians, please let us know by contacting Michael Dowling, International Relations (mdowling@ala.org) or Rick Weingarten, ALA OITP (rweingarten@alawash.org). We would like to communicate with librarians in Iraq in order to find out more information about the destruction of libraries and other cultural centers in the country. 




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ALA Washington Office, 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Suite 403, Washington, D.C. 20004-1701; phone: 202.628.8410 or 800.941.8478 toll-free; fax: 202.628.8419; e-mail: alawash@alawash.org; Web site: http://www.ala.org/washoff.  Executive Director: Emily Sheketoff. Office of Government Relations: Lynne Bradley, Director; Camille Bowman, Mary Costabile, Don Essex, Patrice McDermott and Miriam Nisbet. Office for Information Technology Policy: Rick Weingarten, Director; Jennifer Hendrix, Carrie Russell, Claudette Tennant. ALAWON Editor: Bernadette Murphy.